For 24 years, Suzanne T. Berger handled pension cases as the in-house attorney for the Baltimore County Employees’ Retirement System (ERS).

And for just as long, she advised the board that state law required them to deny service credit transfers from county employee who failed to apply within a prescribed time limit.

The ERS could lose its tax-exempt status if the law was violated, which in turn could jeopardize the retirement benefits of thousands of current and future Baltimore County retirees.

So she was very surprised to learn of a settlement – “fully executed and a done deal,” she later wrote in a memo that has surfaced in a lawsuit – done behind her back by her boss, County Attorney James R. Benjamin Jr., and County Administrative Officer Stacy L. Rodgers.

The May 7, 2020 “Settlement Agreement and Release of Claims” would allow a soon-to-retire firefighter, Philip Tirabassi, to transfer one year and one month of his time with the Baltimore City Fire Department in the 1980s to his Baltimore County service record.

Executed fully two decades after the deadline set by the law, the agreement would give Tirabassi a lump sum payment – in addition to his regular pension – of roughly $125,000 when he retired.

• PART 1: Firefighter who got secret cash payment handled personal real estate for Baltimore County Executive Olszewski (7/30/24)

The seven-page document was the culmination of months of meetings and email exchanges between top aides of Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski and Tirabassi, whose brother John was a close friend of the county executive.

According to the memo disclosed in the lawsuit, Berger told Benjamin and Rodgers that the deal was flatly illegal under the County Code, Sections 5-1-247 and 5-1-249.

A week later, she was told by Benjamin and Olszewski’s chief of staff, Pat Murray, that her job as assistant county attorney was terminated.

“They said they were reorganizing the law office, and that I would retire. But I was fired – 100% fired – because I did not agree with the way they handled the Tirabassi settlement,” Berger told The Brew.

“To break this law”

In a memo she sent to the ERS board (which was publicly disclosed as part of a Maryland Public Information Act lawsuit filed by former county administrator Fred Homan), Berger stressed how unfair the settlement was to other retirees, writing:

“Many other former and current county employees have been denied the ability to transfer prior service time for the same reason of failing to apply within the mandated deadline. To my knowledge, only Mr. Tirabassi has been allowed, in a manner that sidesteps the Board of Trustees completely, to break this law.”

Days before her termination, according to the disclosed records, she informed Budget Director Edward Blades that she would oppose the administration’s plan to get the ERS board to retroactively approve the Tirabassi settlement.

She said the argument then offered by Olszewski aides – and recently repeated by the county executive to the Baltimore Sun – was bogus.

It claimed that the county was forced to settle with the firefighter because another county lawyer had earlier sent out an unauthorized proposed settlement.

“The proposed offer, without authorization, was not binding,” Berger wrote in the memo, especially a settlement that differed strikingly from the one originally crafted by then-county attorney Michael Raimondi.

“Ed had no response to my comments,” she wrote.

“God bless you both”

Meanwhile, buck-passing could be seen in the emails exchanged by Olszewski aides, who made it clear they were under orders to satisfy Tirabassi while fretting that details of the secret pact could leak out.

“We’re reporting back to the CE [county executive] and Stacy on this,” Benjamin wrote on June 1, 2020, adding, “this needs to happen before the small council.”

Rodgers, disagreed, saying, “I did not think this was going through small council,” wondering, “your reference is just a timing thing, right?”

“I’m just saying that as a hook for scheduling purposes,” Murray replied. “This is between you and the CE. God bless you both.”

“This is probably the most annoying thing I have encountered so far. Just so wrong on so MANY levels”  – Administrative Officer Stacy Rodgers.

To which Rodgers let out a burst of frustration:

“This is probably the most annoying thing I have encountered in this tour of duty so far. Just so wrong on so MANY levels.”

Eventually, Murray arranged for a face-to-face meeting between Olszewski and his top staff to resolve the Tirabassi matter.

“We need to look at each other and agree to a thing,” Murray wrote, while also telling Olszewski’s scheduler “to put a tickler on the calendar to remind him to make two Liquor Board calls.”

“Out of the blue”

The outcome of the scheduled August 4, 2020 meeting between Olszewski  and his aides has yet to be disclosed among the records that Circuit Court Judge Michael Finifter ordered the county to release to Homan last February.

Homan and his attorney, Rig Baldwin V, say that the county is still improperly withholding thousands of documents requested under his PIA lawsuit, while spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire outside lawyers to fight his claims.

• Olszewski administration seeks $200,000 more in battle over public information records (7/1/24)

Specifically, Homan cites a “dead period” between July and December 2020 “where we have no idea what happened except that Mr. Tirabassi retired and out of the blue the county sends him a check for $83,675.”

Olszewski and his press office have not responded to Brew questions about the circumstances of Berger’s departure and the reasons why the Tirabassi check was issued.

Homan theorizes that the check was a way of appeasing Tirabassi while not running afoul of ERS rules or alerting board members of a payment that could enrage both retirees and county unions if publicly disclosed.

Yesterday, Tirabassi’s attorney, Jay D. Miller, denied that his client benefited from his brother’s connections with Olszewski.

“Any suggestion that the county executive acted for Mr. Tirabassi’s benefit to the detriment of the county is belied by the facts of what actually transpired,” he told The Brew.

The $83,675 check did not come from the county’s retirement funds. Instead, it was issued from the county’s general liability fund without an explanation as to the reason, origin or purpose of the payment.

Homan, a former county administrator, used his 40 years of experience in local government to track down an image of the check.

He also discovered that the payment was reported to the Baltimore County Council – and to the public – under the pseudonym “Philip Dough.”

“Worried about people looking”

In a deposition, Budget Director Blades, whose office issued the check, was asked by attorney Baldwin why the false name was used:

A: I was worried about people looking in the tracking system and querying on Tirabassi, so Lisa [Peffers, his assistant] and I had a conversation about changing the last name. We agreed to change it to Doe in the system was what I thought, not D-o-u-g-h. The point being if anyone were to go into the system unauthorized to look up the settlement, they would not be able to find it.

Q: Do you know if that explanation was given to members of the County Council when they were being presented with your information?

A: I would say no.

Q: Have you ever seen an[other] agreement that bound Baltimore County to keep the settlement confidential?

A: No.

Q: Have you ever seen a settlement that bound the claimant to keep it confidential?

A: No.

Blades has since retired as budget director and could not be reached for comment.

“The point being if anyone were to go into the system unauthorized to look up the settlement, they would not be able to find it”  – Budget Director Ed Blades.

Asked to respond to rumors that his lawsuit amounts to retribution for Olszewski firing him as county administrator in 2018, Homan said:

“Mr. Olszewski did ask me to retire in the middle of my four-year term. I was entitled to money because of that, but I didn’t [protest] because I believe he has the right to hire his own person. The reason I got involved in this matter, a full two years after I retired, was because I believe the law was violated. Am I suppose to bury my head and do nothing because I used to work there?”

Tirabassi had actually requested the service transfer from the city when Homan was still county administrator in 2018. The matter went nowhere because of his longstanding policy to reject claims that missed the state deadline.

Long, Uphill Battle

Responding to another rumor, Homan said he has had a longstanding friendship with Berger (they were once among six partners who owned a race horse) and was well aware of her termination.

But he said his interest in Tirabassi was sparked by going on the Board of Appeals website to look at another matter.

“While on the website I saw Tirabassi versus Baltimore County. I asked to read the file, and I found that Tirabassi had withdrawn his claim with prejudice. That told me something. He had hired an expensive attorney and fought the county for months, but then he just walked away? That didn’t make any sense to me unless he had gotten some kind of a settlement.”

When his PIA request for information about Tirabassi was rejected by Blades, who argued that retirement records were exempt from public disclosure, he decided to file the lawsuit.

It’s been a long, uphill battle.

The county has paid $315,943 (with an additional $10,000 billed) to the law firm of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz to fight his lawsuit and, according to Homan, “slow walk” the documents that Judge Finifter ordered released.

On July 1, the Baltimore County Council approved $200,000 more so that Baker, Donelson lawyers can continue to represent the county. (The new agreement ups the hourly attorney’s rate from $395 to $495.)

Homan says he personally faces $200,000 in legal fees and still has not gotten an answer to his basic question of why the county paid the firefighter from a general liability fund.

“What ‘liability’ justifies this mysterious figure, and why did Olszewski’s people go to such lengths to hide it? How is this not a conspiracy to defraud Baltimore County?”

• To reach a reporter: reuttermark@yahoo.com